ASOHF: a new adaptive spherical overdensity halo finder

Departament d'Astronomia i Astrofísica, Universitat de València, 46100 Burjassot (Valencia), Spain e-mail: [susana.planelles;vicent.quilis]@uv.es

Received: 8 February 2010
Accepted: 24 May 2010

Abstract

We present and test a new halo finder based on the spherical overdensity (SO) method. This new adaptive spherical overdensity halo finder (ASOHF) is able to identify dark matter haloes and their substructures (subhaloes) down to the scales allowed by the analysed simulations. The code has been especially designed for the adaptive mesh refinement cosmological codes, although it can be used as a stand-alone halo finder for N-body codes. It has been optimised for the purpose of building the merger tree of the haloes. In order to verify the viability of this new tool, we have developed a set of bed tests that allows us to estimate the performance of the finder. Finally, we apply the halo finder to a cosmological simulation and compare the results obtained to those given by other well known publicly available halo finders.